Roger Wood
Wilkins,
the
Clarence J. Robinson Professor of History and American Culture at
George
Mason University, will present the Seventh Annual Davis,
Markert,
Nickerson Lecture on Academic and Intellectual Freedom at 4
p.m. March 17
in Rackham Amphitheater. He will discuss "Race and
Academic
Integrity."

A lawyer, author and scholar, Wilkins served as assistant
attorney
general during the Johnson administration, and has written for
the
New York Times, the Washington Post and
the
Washington Star. He earned a Pulitzer Prize in 1972
for
Watergate coverage.

Wilkins received his undergraduate and law
degrees from the U-M,
where he petitioned the Regents on behalf of the
three professors for
whom the lecture is named.

A past chair of the
Pulitzer Prize Board, he currently serves as
chair of the Board of
Trustees of the African American Institute and
is a member of the board of
the NAACP Legal Defense Fund.

The annual lecture is named for three
U-M faculty
members---Chandler Davis, Clement Markert and Mark
Nickerson---who in
1954 were called to testify before a Congressional
Committee on
Un-American Activities. All invoked constitutional rights and
refused
to answer questions about their political associations.

The
three were suspended from the University, with subsequent
hearings and
committee actions resulting in the reinstatement of
Markert and the
dismissal of Davis and Nickerson, who held tenured
positions.

The
lecture is sponsored by the Academic Freedom Lecture Fund, the
U-M Chapter
of the American Association of University Professors, the
Senate Advisory
Committee on University Affairs, and the Martin
Luther King Jr.-Cesar
Chavez-Rosa Parks Visiting Professors Program.